The Best Star Trek Cards for Your 99, Sorted by the Deck They Slot Into

Star Trek hits shelves on November 13, and most of its strongest Commander cards are payoffs for decks you already own. The set is built around a short list of themes (+1/+1 counters, lands with different names, artifact creatures, spells with modes, sacrifice, life gain), so the best Star Trek cards for your 99 are sorted below by the deck they slot into rather than ranked against each other.

Where a card's rules text punishes a casual read, the trap is called out next to it, because several of these do. If you want the command-zone side of the set, our ranking of the new Star Trek commanders covers that, and the Star Trek mechanics explainer has the long version of every keyword defined in one line here. The complete card list lives on the Star Trek set page.

One per color plus one colorless. These go into a deck of the right colors whatever it is trying to do.

Mr. Spock, Science Officer () is Thought Reflection on a body for three mana less: if you would draw a card, you draw two instead. The replacement applies to each card drawn, one at a time, so a spell that says draw three gives you six and your draw step gives you two. He is a four-mana creature in a format full of removal, so cast him when you can use him the same turn, with a cantrip (a cheap spell that draws a card) in hand or on a turn you are about to wheel (make everyone discard their hand and draw seven). Rhystic Study decks should note that every unpaid tax becomes two cards.

Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy () has flash (you can cast him at instant speed) and a choice when he enters: return a permanent card that is not a Doctor from your graveyard to your hand, or pick up to one other creature so that if it dies this turn, it returns to the battlefield under its owner's control at the next end step with a +1/+1 counter. The second mode wins games. Flash him in with a board wipe (a spell that destroys every creature) on the stack, point him at your best creature, and it comes back after the wipe resolves. In a sacrifice deck the same mode turns one death into a free re-entry, with the enters trigger that comes with it.

The Wrath of Khan () is a three-chapter Saga (an enchantment that advances one chapter on each of your turns and is sacrificed after the last) that does more than most red removal. Chapter one deals 4 damage to a creature an opponent controls, and if it survives, you gain control of it at your next combat this turn, untapped and with haste. So it kills a utility creature or borrows their biggest body for a swing.

Chapter two lets you exile a card from your hand to draw a fresh one, and chapter three makes each opponent sacrifice a nontoken permanent of their choice. Three mana for removal, a card swap and a forced sacrifice from every opponent is a fine rate anywhere.

Khan, Vengeful Heart () draws two cards when he enters if you sacrifice another creature or artifact, which in Commander usually means a Treasure or a token you were done with. The line that matters is the last one: you may cast him from exile. If an opponent answers him with Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile, you can cast him again from where he landed. If your own deck exiles cards from your graveyard, he comes back from there too.

Test of Conviction () is white card draw at a rate white rarely gets: for two mana, an opponent draws one card and you draw two. The other mode puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control, a decent pump for a deck full of small creatures at the same cost. Choosing a mode on it counts as facing a dilemma, the set's new game action (you face a dilemma whenever you choose one or more modes for a spell or ability), so it also feeds the payoffs in the dilemma section below. Give the card to the opponent who is furthest behind.

U.S.S. Enterprise-D, Galaxy-Class () is a colorless engine for any deck with creatures. Spacecraft arrive as noncreature artifacts, and you station them by tapping another creature you control, at sorcery speed (in your own main phase with nothing on the stack), to add charge counters equal to its power. The first time each turn counters land on the Enterprise-D, you exile the top card of your library and may play it this turn, so station in your main phase and the exiled card is playable right away.

One point most players miss: tapping a creature as the cost of another permanent's ability is not blocked by summoning sickness, so the creature you cast this turn can station the ship this turn. With Warp Core, which puts two charge counters on a Spacecraft for and a tap, the ship runs with no creatures at all.

This is the set's deepest theme for the 99, and the cards stack with each other as well as with the staples already in a Hardened Scales shell.

Dr. Joseph M'Benga () doubles every counter you would put on a creature you control, of every kind, and gives hexproof (opponents cannot target it) to your other creatures that carry a counter. Two words carry the card: it is counters you put, so a stun counter from an opponent (a counter that makes a permanent skip its next untap) is not doubled, and the hexproof is on other creatures, so M'Benga himself is the one they will shoot. He doubles the counters a creature enters with as well, which is where the next card comes in. He does nothing on his own, so land him the turn before the counters start flowing rather than as your last play.

Deanna Troi, Psychic Counsel () makes every other creature you control enter with an additional +1/+1 counter. That two-mana enabler turns every creature in the deck into a counters creature, which matters for Phlox, Unorthodox Doctor (), who draws you a card whenever a creature you control with a counter on it deals combat damage to a player. With Troi, M'Benga and Phlox out together, each creature enters with two counters, has hexproof, and draws on connection.

The Doctor, EMH () puts a counter on one creature when it enters, then another counter on every creature you control that already has one. In a Troi deck that is a one-shot pump for the whole board, and every later copy or re-entry repeats it.

Jadzia Dax, Living Legacy () grows by a counter at the start of your first main phase, then adds for each counter on her. Alone she is slow ramp (mana ahead of your land drops), one mana on the first turn and two on the next. Under M'Benga she gets two counters a turn and the mana doubles with it. Her second ability discards her from your hand for to put two counters on any creature, so she is never a dead late draw.

Lieutenant Commander Data () grows whenever any player casts a noncreature spell, and for he draws a card by removing three counters from among your creatures. In a four-player game he picks up counters on every turn of the table. The counters you did not need become cards, which is the draw engine blue counters decks have lacked.

Strange new worlds is an ability word, which has no rules meaning on its own; the text after it counts the number of differently named lands you control. In a two- or three-color Commander deck with a normal manabase that count sits around five to seven by the midgame, and it climbs past eight only in a dedicated lands deck with extra land drops. The trap is the word "differently": twelve Forests count as one land for every strange new worlds card, so a mono-green deck full of basics gets the smallest numbers from the cards that look best for it. The five mono-colored lands and ten Planets near the end of this post each add a new name where a second basic does not.

Captain Pike, Fullness of Time () lets you look at the top card of your library at any time and play lands from the top of it, and his power and toughness equal your count of differently named lands. He is Courser of Kruphix without the revealed card or the life gain, with a body that is a 5/5 or 6/6 around turn six in most decks and bigger in a lands deck. He does not grant an extra land drop the way Oracle of Mul Daya does, so he does not replace Oracle. He is the three-mana version you cast first.

Genesis Device () is the set's quiet bomb for landfall decks (landfall abilities trigger whenever a land enters under your control). When it enters it puts a basic land or a Planet onto the battlefield tapped, so it is Rampant Growth on a legendary artifact. Then, for , a tap and sacrificing the Device itself, at sorcery speed, you sacrifice any number of lands and search for that many land cards, any lands and not only basics, and put them onto the battlefield tapped. That is a one-shot Scapeshift stapled to a ramp spell: with eight lands out, the activation is eight landfall triggers and a fully rebuilt manabase of whatever your deck most wants.

U.S.S. Voyager, Lone Wanderer () reveals cards from the top of your library until it finds two lands and puts both onto the battlefield tapped when it enters. Four mana for two lands and two landfall triggers is the going rate, and unlike a sorcery it stays behind as a Spacecraft you can station later.

Will Riker, First in the Field () does the same trick at the start of every one of your combats, except the two lands arrive untapped and are sacrificed at your next end step. Read that as two landfall triggers and two extra mana per turn, plus two lands in your graveyard each turn for a Crucible of Worlds deck to replay.

Stable Wormhole () makes a tapped Planet land token named New Planet, which taps for a mana of any color, whenever you attack. It is an extra land every turn you swing with no land drop spent, and it is a token, which matters for Replicator in the sacrifice section below. Every New Planet shares one name, though, so a pile of them adds exactly one to your strange new worlds count.

Deep Space Scan () draws a card per differently named land and removes your maximum hand size until your next turn. At the five-to-seven count a normal manabase gives you, it is a six-mana draw five or six, and in a lands deck it is the best draw spell in the set. The sorcery timing is the only thing holding it back.

The Destruction of Praxis () uses the same count as a sweeper (a spell that shrinks or kills every creature at once): all creatures get -X/-X, and at six or more you also get two 2/1 Klingon tokens with haste once the smoke clears. It hits your own creatures too, so it belongs in a lands deck that keeps few of them. For the Gruul (red-green) landfall shell, Dal R'El, Augment Orphan () adds or on every land drop and sacrifices a land for to draw a card, and Captain Michael Burnham () deals 1 damage to each opponent on every land drop. Both are solid filler for the archetype rather than reasons to build it.

The Borg cards are artifact creatures that reward you for controlling other artifact creatures, which means they slot into every Myr or Thopter deck already on your shelf, Borg or not.

Primary Unimatrix Adjunct () gives every artifact creature you control double strike, itself included. That is the entire card and it is enough: a board of Thopter tokens with double strike closes a game two turns faster.

Crystalline Entity () is an eight-mana flier that destroys all nonartifact creatures when it enters, as long as you cast it. In a deck where every creature is an artifact it is a one-sided board wipe with a body attached, and the cast clause means no cheating it in off a reanimation spell. Casting it from your graveyard with Overflow Submatrix still counts as casting, so the wipe happens again.

Overflow Submatrix () lets you cast one artifact creature spell from your graveyard during each of your turns, with a finality counter that exiles it if it dies again. Pair it with a sacrifice outlet and every artifact creature in the yard is one more use. Collation Trimatrix () taps three untapped artifact creatures to draw a card and lose 1 life. There is no tap symbol in that cost, so summoning-sick creatures can pay it: three tokens made this turn draw a card this turn.

Hive Mind Coprocessor () gives your artifact creatures a pay 1 life, draw a card trigger on combat damage to a player. Against three opponents with a wide board that is a card for every hit and a life for every card, so check your total before you start paying.

Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge () is not a Borg card, but he belongs here because he doubles the charge counters you put on artifacts you control, including the counters an artifact enters with. Everflowing Chalice enters with twice its kicks, Magistrate's Scepter reaches its first extra turn in two activations instead of three, and Darksteel Reactor wins in ten upkeeps instead of twenty. Every Spacecraft stations twice as fast. Only a charge-counter deck wants him, and that deck wants him badly.

The honest word on Death Is Irrelevant (): it gives your artifact creatures indestructible and assimilates a creature card from any graveyard at each of your end steps (assimilate puts the card onto the battlefield under your control with a +1/+1 counter as a Borg artifact creature that loses its other creature types). It works the turn you cast it, because your end step comes after your main phase. Eight mana for an enchantment that then has to survive a full table turn to fire again is an upgrade for a preconstructed deck, and tuned artifact decks will skip it.

Dilemma is the set's new game action: you face a dilemma whenever you choose one or more modes for a spell or ability, and choosing two modes on one spell is still one dilemma. Every Charm or Command you already run counts, and so does every creature with a choose-one enters ability, so these payoffs work in a deck that never casts a Star Trek spell.

Seven of Nine () draws a card whenever you face a dilemma. She is the simplest payoff and the one to put in an existing Dimir (blue-black) deck first, because every modal spell you already run becomes a cantrip.

Tell Me What You See () makes an opponent choose when it enters: let you draw a card, or lose 4 life while you surveil 1 (look at the top card of your library and keep it or put it in the graveyard). Whenever you face a dilemma you may return it to your hand, and two mana later it asks again. In a deck casting a modal spell most turns, it is a repeatable two-mana punisher (a card that hands the opponent a choice between two bad options).

Kobayashi Maru Scenario () is the set's clearest trap. Each upkeep you choose a mode that has not been chosen yet: bounce an opposing creature with mana value 3 or less, draw two cards, make two 1/1 Officers, or lose the game. Three upkeeps of value, and on the fourth the only mode left is losing, and the trigger does not let you decline. You need a plan to sacrifice it or flicker it (a flickered enchantment leaves and returns as a new object with no modes chosen) before upkeep four.

Each of those three upkeeps is a dilemma, so Seven of Nine draws off it. The Caretaker (), which lets you cast a free spell off the top of an opponent's library at any end step on a turn you faced a dilemma, fires on three consecutive turns from one three-mana enchantment.

Brazen Bluff () is red's counterspell, and the opponent gets the choice: they exile their own noncreature spell, or they let it resolve and you cast a noncreature spell from your hand for free. The play pattern is the card. Hold it with your most expensive spell in hand and the opponent loses either way; fire it with an empty hand and they will happily let their spell resolve.

Scotty, Miracle Worker () gives every instant and sorcery in your graveyard beam me up during your main phase, at a cost equal to its mana cost. Beam me up casts a card from your graveyard if you also return a creature you control to its owner's hand, then exiles the spell. In a deck with enters-the-battlefield creatures that return is the point: bounce a Mulldrifter to recast a removal spell, then recast the Mulldrifter for two more cards. Scotty cannot return himself.

Subcommander T'Pol () is a flash creature that counters an activated or triggered ability when she enters, or taps a creature or artifact and puts a stun counter on it. Countering a commander's attack trigger or a fetch land's sacrifice ability (fetch lands search up another land) at instant speed, and keeping a body for it, is a real card in any blue deck. Wesley Crusher, Starfleet Cadet () is the same idea with two modes chosen from four, including a soft counter (one the caster can pay to beat) and a bounce. Each of them counts as one dilemma.

Aristocrats decks (the shorthand for decks that sacrifice their own creatures for value) got a steady supply of bodies from this set, and two cards here can wreck the deck if you misread them.

Troubling Tribbles () cannot block and makes a token copy of itself at the start of each of your upkeeps. The copies have the same ability, so the count doubles each turn: one, two, four, eight, sixteen on your fourth upkeep after casting it. That is exponential fodder for Korvold, Fae-Cursed King or any sacrifice outlet. It is also a pile of creatures that cannot block and that attracts a Blasphemous Act, so convert them into value before someone converts them into nothing.

D-7 Battle Cruiser () is a two-mana Spacecraft that, once it has three or more charge counters, makes a 2/1 Klingon Warrior token with haste at the start of each of your combats and sacrifices it at end step. One station from a three-power creature and it is a free body to sacrifice every turn for the rest of the game, in a deck like Mahadi, Emporium Master that pays you for each death.

Grand Nagus Zek () makes a Treasure the first time another creature dies each turn and grows with your Treasure count. Gowron, Eager for Battle () is a free sacrifice outlet that gains trample, draws a card when the sacrifice was a Klingon, and grows on every creature death at the table. The D-7's token is a Klingon, so in the same deck the Cruiser is a card a turn through Gowron.

The Needs of the Many () costs a creature to cast and then, until end of turn, gives your creatures hexproof and indestructible, gives you hexproof, and prevents all damage to you, before exiling itself. Think of it as a creatures-only Heroic Intervention plus a one-turn damage shield for you, paid for with a token. It does not stop sacrifice effects, -X/-X, exile sweepers or life loss that is not damage.

Eject the Warp Core () gives a creature -2/-2 at instant speed, or -6/-6 if you sacrifice an artifact or creature as you cast it. A Treasure or a Tribble turns it into removal that kills indestructible creatures, which no Murder variant can claim.

Two cards here look like upgrades and are not, in the wrong deck. Holo-Engineer () replaces every token you would create with a 3/3 colorless Illusion artifact creature. Every token: your Treasures, Clues, Food and Planet tokens all become 3/3s too. In an Officer-token deck it triples your power; in a Treasure deck it deletes your mana, and next to Troubling Tribbles each copy is a plain 3/3 that no longer copies itself, so the doubling stops.

Replicator () makes a Food when it enters and then, for and a tap, creates a tapped copy of any token you control. Copying a Treasure every turn is fine. Copying the New Planet land token from Stable Wormhole is an extra land every turn for two mana, which is the line to build toward. Under Holo-Engineer, naturally, the copy is a 3/3.

Dr. Beverly Crusher () is the best card in the set for an existing life gain deck. If your gaining life causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, it triggers an additional time. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose drains twice per gain. Ajani's Pridemate gets two counters. Her own second ability, a +1/+1 counter whenever you gain life, is a triggered ability of a permanent you control caused by life gain, so she grows by two herself.

Our Combo Finder already lists her in a loop with Agatha's Soul Cauldron and Walking Ballista. With Ballista exiled under the Cauldron, Crusher gains its ping ability once she carries a +1/+1 counter. Give her lifelink (Vito's activation does it) and each ping gains 1 life, her doubled trigger adds two counters, and you are up a counter per ping for infinite damage. Without the lifelink the three cards do nothing, so do not sleeve it up on the card names alone.

Gul Dukat, Colonial Prefect () has menace (it takes two creatures to block him) and, at each end step, makes each opponent lose life equal to the life they lost that turn while you gain the total. Seven mana is the real cost, but he doubles every point of life your opponents lost that turn from any source, and he does it on your opponents' turns too, so a table that fights among itself feeds you.

Georgiou, Terran Emperor () stops you losing the game at 0 or less life. At your end step you lose 3 life and draw a card (a loss, not a payment, so it keeps going below zero), and if you are then at 0 or below she makes ten 1/1 Officers.

Two traps. First, the moment she leaves the battlefield while you are at zero or less, you lose on the spot, so protect her or stay above zero. Second, once you are at 0 or less you cannot pay life for anything, because a life payment requires a life total at least that high; Phyrexian mana (paid with 2 life) and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth stop working exactly when they looked free.

Live Long and Prosper () cannot be countered, doubles your life total and then draws cards equal to the cards in your hand. Doubling a positive life total is a life gain, so it triggers every life gain payoff you control, twice each with Dr. Crusher out. At 0 it gains nothing, and below 0 doubling means losing that much again, so it does not belong in the Georgiou plan. Neelix, Moral Support () brings a Food and grows on every life gain, a cheap body for the same deck.

Beam me up and a few creatures in this set reward returning your own permanents to hand. A deck that already recasts its creatures for their enters triggers gets a second engine out of these.

Miles O'Brien, Transporter Ops () returns another creature or artifact you control to your hand when he enters, and at each end step, if a permanent returned to your hand from the battlefield that turn, you draw a card. A beam me up spell counts for the draw, since it returns a creature to your hand from the battlefield. He has no flash, so he will not rescue a creature from removal on the stack, but at sorcery speed he frees a creature from a Pacifism-style Aura or resets an enters trigger, and the draw comes with either.

Lwaxana Troi, Charming Guest () is a two-mana Strionic Resonator that you aim once. Pay and tap her, pick another creature you control, and for as long as she stays tapped that creature's triggered abilities trigger an additional time. She can choose not to untap, so the effect lasts as long as you want it to. Point her at a commander with an attack trigger or a creature with a "whenever another creature enters" ability; if the chosen creature leaves and comes back, it is a new object and the effect is gone.

Gray and Adira, Forever Joined () make a hasty token copy of a creature you control at the start of your combat if you cast a noncreature spell that turn. The copy is not legendary and is sacrificed at end step, so in a spellslinger deck (one built around casting lots of instants and sorceries) that is a copy of your commander attacking every turn, with its enters trigger thrown in.

Federation Resupply () tutors (searches your library for) an Aura, Equipment or Spacecraft and puts it in your hand, and it has beam me up for . It finds more kinds of cards than Open the Armory for the same price, and a Voltron deck (one creature carrying all the Equipment) gets a second tutor out of it. Pay the beam me up cost by bouncing a cheap creature, never the suited-up commander, since the Equipment falls off. Energize () bounces an opposing creature and beams back up for by returning one of yours, which in a deck that recasts its creatures for their enters triggers is a second removal spell that also resets your best enters ability.

Dominion Saboteur () is a five-mana clone (a creature that enters as a copy of another) that can copy an artifact or a creature, is never legendary, and enters with the same counters the original has. That last clause is why it appears in more of our Combo Finder's Star Trek combos than any other card from the set. Copy a persist creature that carries a +1/+1 counter (persist returns a creature that dies without a -1/-1 counter on it to the battlefield with one) and sacrifice the Saboteur to Ashnod's Altar: persist brings it back, it re-enters as a fresh copy with a +1/+1 counter, the two counters cancel, and the loop repeats for infinite mana. As a fair card it is a flexible clone for any blue deck that already runs two or three.

Five mono-colored lands (Federation Outpost for white, Ni'Var Science Academy for blue, The Unicomplex for black, Quark's Bar for red, Q Continuum for green) enter tapped unless you control two or more other lands, and when they enter untapped you choose a small bonus or a surveil 1. The cost is a tapped land on turns one and two if you draw them early; from your third land onward they play like untapped basics with a free effect, and because they are nonbasic each one adds a new name to a strange new worlds count. The Unicomplex is the best of them: putting a creature card from your graveyard on top of your library is recursion on a land.

The ten Planet lands, Vulcan and Risa among them, are two-color commons that enter tapped and gain you 1 life, in the same class as Tranquil Cove. What sets them apart is the Planet subtype, which Genesis Device, Final Frontier and Warp Speed all search for, so a two-color deck running any of those should run its Planet.

Starfleet Academy is a legendary land that taps for colorless and, for and a tap, adds mana of one color equal to the number of creature types among your non-Borg creatures. Creature types have nothing to do with colors: a mono-green deck with Pike, McCoy and Jadzia Dax on the table already shows six. The math is the catch. At six types the activation nets exactly what tapping the land for would have, so it only gets ahead at seven types or more, and changelings count as Borg, so they add nothing. The set also reprints all ten shock lands (two-color lands that enter untapped if you pay 2 life), Hallowed Fountain through Stomping Ground, which is the cheapest way a Star Trek pack upgrades a manabase.

Infinite Diversity () copies an instant or sorcery from your graveyard once per creature type among your non-Borg creatures and lets you cast the copies free. Nine mana for a spell that needs a full board and a graveyard target is a turn-twelve play in a format where games end on turn nine. Deep Space 9 () puts every permanent card from the top four of your library onto the battlefield when it enters and at each of your upkeeps, which is plenty of free stuff at nine mana with no built-in protection.

Peace in Our Time () wins the game at twelve peace counters, one per player per turn who takes a card instead of attacking. Nobody at a table that can read will take the card once it has six counters. Q, Stacking the Deck () exiles a random nonland card off the top and lets you copy it on your own turn as often as you can exile cards from your hand, but you still pay each copy's mana cost, and the card is random. Fun in a league where you record the stories; skip it in a deck that wants to win.

Our Star Trek combos page lists 526 combos the set made possible as of this writing, 77 of them two-card. Dominion Saboteur appears in the most, with Captain Kathryn Janeway () close behind, and her lines are the same persist trick from a different angle: every creature that enters under her explores, and when the top card is a nonland the explore puts a +1/+1 counter on it, so a persist creature plus Altar of Dementia or any free sacrifice outlet loops. Her extra land drop also shows up in a stack of Glacial Chasm land loops. Neither card is a reason to buy a box, but both tell you which of these a tuned table will treat as a threat on sight.

Before any of these goes into a deck, paste the list into the Commander Bracket Calculator and see whether the swap moved the deck's bracket. A counters deck that adds M'Benga and Troi can play above the bracket the calculator gives it, and that is a conversation for your pod before the game. For the same treatment of the other recent sets, see the best Reality Fracture cards for your 99 and the best Mystery Booster Commander Edition cards for your 99. If you are still deciding what to pull from your prerelease pool, the full Star Trek spoiler roundup has every card.